Mercedes Unveils Digital Headlights That Project Street Signs, Markings Onto the Road Ahead (newatlas.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from New Atlas: Mercedes has just announced a conceptual new set of lamps that can not only adapt their light distribution to cater to the environment, but can project high-res visual aids onto the road ahead, such as makeshift zebra crossings for nearby pedestrians. The new system is dubbed Digital Light and features two million pixels that, with the help of algorithms and sensors that analyze the vehicle's surroundings, can each adjust their individual brightness depending on the scenario. An example of this might be a partial dimming to avoid blinding a cyclist. We have seen this kind of adaptive lighting technology before in systems developed by Fraunhofer and indeed Mercedes itself, although tuning it to control millions of pixels individually does appear to be new territory. But where the Digital Light system gets quite interesting is with the ability to project different objects onto the road. Imagine you are rolling up to an intersection in a foreign city with unfamiliar streets signs and the car, having collected the necessary information, projects a stop sign onto the road out ahead. Perhaps just as practical is the ability to shoot out strips of light that represent the precise width of the car, which could be pretty hand just as you try to squeeze through that extremely narrow gap. For what it's worth, Mercedes says it has already fitted it to a number of demo vehicles and reckons it will be on the road "in the near future."

Comments

Bad Idea, but that's what Germany is up to now.

[Anonymous Coward]

The correct way to do this is with a heads-up display. Projecting images on the road will have all sorts of unintended consequences,
including but not limited to distracting the drivers of oncoming cars ( those people who are so inconsiderately sharing the road
you imagine you "own" ).

I'd say I was surprised that German engineers thought this was a good idea, but I've seen the cars they are making these days
and I now expect mediocre work from them. Stuff like plastic intake manifolds and coolant piping, and the most amusing of all,
the "biodegradable" wiring harness ( ask any season Mercedes-Benz tech about that one ) have caused me to conclude that
the companies involved are no longer concerned with doing the best possible work.

Re:Bad Idea, but that's what Germany is up to now.

[zlives]

4 Mercedes pull up to 4-way stop
hilarity ensues

Re:Bad Idea, but that's what Germany is up to now.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Projecting images on the road will have all sorts of unintended consequences"

Some definitely would, that projection of a "turn here" image into the middle of an intersection is hilariously stupid. Many of the other capabilities would be hard pressed to do anything but assist in real world driving. Directing the headlight beam away from the windshield of oncoming cars and the faces of pedestrians would be a major improvement. The ability to project some simple notifications (like pedestrian markers, highlighting stopped/slowed vehicles in front of you, etc) would also most likely be far more of an asset than a drawback. That said all of this is predicated on a system that can do so with near perfect reliability, that would be a tall order for current technology.

Re:Bad Idea, but that's what Germany is up to now.

[xlsior]

The correct way to do this is with a heads-up display. Projecting images on the road will have all sorts of unintended consequences, including but not limited to distracting the drivers of oncoming cars ( those people who are so inconsiderately sharing the road you imagine you "own" ).

While the road projection seems like a dumb idea, some of the other features of these smart lights as shown on their site actually sound really useful, such as intelligently not blinding oncoming traffic by blocking your headlights from projecting light at their faces while still lighting up the rest of the road in front of you.

Re:Bad Idea, but that's what Germany is up to now.

[Anonymous Coward]

They can't track someone's head in an small, empty, unobstructed cabin, but they want us to bet our lives on their ability to track hundreds of cars/pedestrians/random bits of debris in real time in a region of hundreds of thousands of cubic yards in god-knows what weather?

No possible problem with this at all.

[Obfuscant]

projects a stop sign onto the road out ahead.

Or projects a different sign. Other vehicles see that sign and assume it must be right, ignoring the posted stop sign (or other traffic control device) and causing an accident. I see absolutely no risk in each vehicle creating it's own moving traffic control system.

Especially when it starts projecting "zebra crossings" into the street. That's going to create a mess and be quite a process here in Oregon where there is a crosswalk at every intersection. What fun, when a pedestrian sees the oncoming car projecting crosswalk markings so they assume the driver is aware of it and steps out into the street assuming the driver is already planning on stopping. Hilarity ensues.

Very interesting, but could cause other problems

[Dan East]

This is pretty cool. I think in general it's a good idea, however I can see it causing entirely new sets of problems. As drivers we recognize the difference between what we ought to do, and what we must do. For example, there are times when crossing a double yellow line would result in my death, while there are other times I cross the double yellow line safely and without risk to avoid a hazard in my lane or on the shoulder. My concern is people will start seeing these visual aids as things they *must* do. Thus in the process of trying to adhere exactly to the virtual markings, they become oblivious to the actual hazards that are more important. In one of the pictures they show two lane markers projected, which is where the car ideally should travel. On the right there are barriers that are actual hazards that are taking up part of the lane, and to the left is the other lane, which may or may not be an actual hazard. So if I am concentrating on the projected markers (which I assume are "intelligent" because they are dynamic), will it be obvious enough that I am travelling into another lane and that I must make sure the lane is clear of other vehicles first?
http://img-2.newatlas.com/merc...

The real question though is this... if the car has that much information about the environment to project images that tell you what to do, why isn't the car doing the driving in the first place?

The marketing options are endless!!

[Overzeetop]

Can the project ads for close by stores, like Duncan Donuts? Or maybe pop up some on-road advertising for what you look at on Amazon last night, and then an arrow showing where you can buy it locally! Oh, brave new world!

You should *NOT* be projecting....

[mark-t]

... stuff onto the road because it will only distract and confuse other people. On a closed course, that might be fine, but when you are sharing the road with other drivers, there is just way too much that can go wrong with this (with potentially fatal consequences).

If you want to help the motorist with tech like this, put a HUD inside of the car that will show the necessary info on the windshield to the driver, because there is no reason for anyone outside of the car to see that shit.

Re:Very interesting, but could cause other problem

[blindseer]

The real question though is this... if the car has that much information about the environment to project images that tell you what to do, why isn't the car doing the driving in the first place?

That's easy, lawyers.

Lawyers are why we can't have nice things.

Don't get me wrong. We need laws. We need people knowledgeable in law. We need courts, a justice system, and so on. The problem is a profession built upon frivolous lawsuits. These lawyers get paid even if the suit is stupid, or even unlikely to win. There is no easy solution to this because the stupidity of a given lawsuit is in itself something that is open to debate. Getting lawyers that simply will not take money to go through with stupid suits is impossible, because people need money.

Technological solutions to problems are not nearly the obstacle they used to be. Getting this technology to fit in a society that is not used to such a pace in technological development is now a much larger problem. At least that is how I see it.

What happened to rain-hiding headlights?

[wonkey_monkey]

I'm more impressed by this proof-of-concept from a few years ago, of headlights which could selectively de-illuminate individual raindrops and improve visibility in rain (or so was claimed) by 50% even at 90km/h.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Not just a bad idea it's a sinister one

[Roger W Moore]

It's less funny when you realize that they are developing a car that can project a "makeshift zebra crossing" onto the road directly in front of it. Why exactly would you want to entice pedestrians to walk out into the road directly in front of a car? Hmmm.

How long until the first ads?

[HangingChad]

And projecting ads will be a day 1 feature in this application.